


And The Crownless Again Shall Be King

by pentaghastly



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M, Flashbacks, Reunion, Sibling Incest, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:47:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Human life means nothing in the eyes of gods and men.</p>
<p>It is something Sansa has known for as long as she thinks she has known anything, since her betrothed chopped off the head of her father, her father who was a man more devoted to gods and men than anyone she had known. It was a lesson taught to her daily as she was held captive in King’s Landing, when she had to watch, with stony face and hard heart, as Joffery beat and killed men, men who had done nothing to deserve such punishment. It was drilled into her head during years of war, repeated when she herself was involved in the murder of a King, a simple fact that has had a stronger presence than any in her young life -- that all men must live as all must must die, and in the end they die as easy as they are born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And The Crownless Again Shall Be King

**Author's Note:**

> Jon/Sansa, with flashbacks and mentions of Sansa/basically everyone. Just random, romantic, sad, and all that good stuff.

Human life means nothing in the eyes of gods and men.

It is something Sansa has known for as long as she thinks she has known anything, since her betrothed chopped off the head of her father, her father who was a man more devoted to gods and men than anyone she had known. It was a lesson taught to her daily as she was held captive in King’s Landing, when she had to watch, with stony face and hard heart, as Joffery beat and killed men, men who had done nothing to deserve such punishment. It was drilled into her head during years of war, repeated when she herself was involved in the murder of a King, a simple fact that has had a stronger presence than any in her young life -- that all men must live as all must must die, and in the end they die as easy as they are born.

Sansa thinks of this lesson when she chops off the head of the Bastard of Bolton, the hushed silence of her people (yes, _her_ people now, and what a thing that is to think, for these have always been her father’s people, always been her brother’s, never hers, not really) cutting through the air sharper than her blade. _The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword,_ it had been and always would be, and should it be any different were the sentence passed by a woman?

She would not think so, as she is certain her father wouldn’t. And so she swings the sword, and it takes two tries before she can separate head from body, and by the time she is finished her thin arms are quivering, although she shows no sign of exhaustion on her face. It takes two swings for her to kill the man, but only one breath is allowed to slip past her lips, and in that moment, that breath seems to last for an eternity, and all she can see in front of her is her father’s head rolling on the ground, her father’s body limp and lifeless by her feet, and it is not until she hears the cheers of her people -- _her_ people, she must always remind herself of that from now on, they belong to her and her alone, or so she must hope -- that she remembers where she stands.

The war is over, the battle is won. She wears a crown of bronze too large for her head and sits on a throne of stone too hard for her fragile bones, her kingdom a desolate crypt, and in the back of her mind she is crying for the life which she has lost.

xx

Petyr taught her that to show weakness was to admit to defeat, and she will do no such thing. 

Weakness is not an option -- it was not in King’s Landing, was not in the Vale, and will not be in Winterfell, even if this is her home, or the tattered ruins of it. She knows that there are still people who want her dead, for despite Stannis Baratheon having claimed the throne there are still Lannisters, still friends of Lannisters and enemies of Starks who would rather see her head on a spike than adorned with a crown. A sign of weakness to them would be an open invitation for war; peace is still new in Westeros, fragile and unsteady, and the smallest spark could start the blaze anew. 

Winterfell is struggling enough, the people in the kingdom dying as quickly as they were during The War of the Five Kings -- the air reeked of death and pestilence, and despite the fast-approaching summer, there was still a harsh bite of cold in the wind that was tearing through to the core of the thick-skinned Northerners. And there was the food, or rather, the devastating shortage of it, with mothers and babes and knights alike succumbing to the sharp claws of starvation. Sansa was blessed, Sansa was safe, Sansa was lucky, for she was Queen in the North, for she was not able to be touched by the devastation, for she would not be touched, because the Old Gods were looking down on her, and therefore she was safe from harm. That was what they said, what they all said, and when they said it to her she smiled and nodded and thanked them, and when they turned from her she wept.

For how could one person remain untouched from death when it was all around? She had become the holy savior of a nation going under, and all that she knew was that death favored no one, and that the gods kept no one safe from its grasp. Especially not a Queen -- for she had seen a Queen die with her own eyes, watch as her knight squeezed the life out of her until she was no more than a beautiful corpse, looking near a doll as she lay on the stony floor of the sept.

And she knew that King’s could die, too. Joffrey hadn’t counted, for he wasn’t a true king, not really. Joffrey hadn’t counted, for he had been a boy, a pathetic, sad little boy who had deserved all he had gotten, and who had led the Kingdom into a state of destruction from which she did not think it could ever escape. 

But Robb had been a King, her brother, who had been as strong and as brave as any before him, who had fought with the courage of a wolf and the honor of their Lord Father, who had worked to save her, to save _all_ of them from those who had treated them unfairly, who would push them down, who would hurt them. Robb had been good, had been kind, and been as true a King as any, and he had died, just as any other man would die, just as she would die. A crown did not keep one safe from death, but drew it nearer, kept it lingering over one’s shoulder until it was finally time to strike, and Sansa thought that she could feel its cold breath upon the steel skin of her neck. 

So where did that leave her? It left her with a kingdom that thought she was invincible, the knowledge that she wasn’t, that she was far from it, and the taxing duty of attempting to act as if she knew nothing like she had the same foolish belief that they did -- for what kind of ruler would she be, were she to strip away the small shred of hope that remained to them?

And so she smiled and nodded, and asked the people what they needed (and pretended she could give it to them, for they all knew that her promises were ones that could not be kept -- they _knew_ , they just chose not to see) and on the flawless foundation of her steel skin there was not a scratch.

xx

“Your brother rides for Winterfell, Your Grace. Him and a hundred former men of the Night’s Watch, all riding to pledge fealty to you.”

Sansa hears it in Brienne’s voice, clear as day -- she knows that she is meant to be excited. Not only for the prospect of Jon’s return, since he shall be the first face from her old life, her true life, that she has seen since her father’s beheading. She knows that she is meant to be excited at the prospect of men, for surely the once-Black Brothers have food and supplies that they shall bring to Winterfell, and even if they do not, the helping hands are always needed. The majority of the strong young men died in the war, and even more have been crippled and eaten away by winter’s sharp claws and the cruelty of starvation. They _need_ these men, and the Maester that will accompany them, they need them if they wish to survive the year.

But she cares little for the return of Jon Snow, for he is not her brother, he never has been at all, and even if he still remained the bastard son of her Lord father, he would not be the brother she so desperately craved to see, would never be the sibling she longed for. Sansa had long gotten over her resentment of Jon, for there were so many people she had how to hate that she found she could no longer carry the weight of her despise, and it seemed trivial to hold such a grudge towards one who had never done you wrong, not really, not at all.

Yes, there was nothing but indifference that remained in her bones for her once-brother, now cousin. Nothing at all, and yet she cannot help but resent him just the slightest in the fact that he returns home to Winterfell, while her brothers bones lie cold and dead in the dirt, her true brothers, her true family. Robb was good and Robb was pure, Bran was young and sweet, Rickon was helpless and innocent, and yet they all died the same (she assumes Bran and Rickon are dead; two years since the end of the war and not a word, two years of waiting, of desperate silence, and her new-found acceptance stings all the same). She is certain that Jon feels the same, that he would give his life for the true Starks of Winterfell to be returning to the once-great castle of old, but in the end he cannot, will never be able to, and it is for that that she cannot bring herself to smile.

However, she turns to Brienne all the same, inclining her head slightly to the right, and speaks, voice still high and lilting, but with an edge that cuts through the frozen air like Valyrian steel.

“Prepare the castle, Brienne,” she states, a firm demand even though she knows that her faithful guardian shall not refuse, not upon her life. “Fix up my Father’s room so it is fit to live in, and ensure that there is space enough for a Direwolf to roam freely. My brother returns to Winterfell.”

And even then, with the utmost sound of authority in her voice, the words sound false to Sansa’s own ears.


End file.
